Do You Plan For New Phone or Gadgets? Its called Planned Obsolescence

How do the electronic gadget companies earn in billions every year?

Planned Obsolescence: In the development of technology, people spend most of their time with gadgets rather than their fellow being. Living in such era your best companion is your electronic gadgets. But ultimately the life of those gadgets are only 2 years.

You spend too much of time in reviewing the product before you add it to your cart. Have you ever thought of using a mobile for 20 years in which you have invested few thousand bucks?

Planned Obsolescence

What will be the situation of those companies who invest few millions to develop a product if the product lasts so long? It’s really pathetic, right?

But that is not the case in reality. People are waiting in long queues to buy their electronic gadgets which we are seeing on every Apple product release. After evolvement of e-commerce, the products are delivered to your place on right time with the advance booking before the launch of the product.

If your mobile phone is two years old then surely you could face anyone following problems like screen crack, battery down, headset issue and many more. Even if you don’t face any of this issue it doesn’t mean your lucky.

Because the software whatever your using is already 2 versions older than the latest version. As everyone is aware of development in the version of Android since its beta version released in 2007. These are the few market strategies that these technology-based companies use to feel the customer that their gadgets are old ones. And of course, the customer will add another new gadget to their cart.

The way of forcing the product as waste indirectly into customer’s mindset is called planned obsolescence.

What is planned obsolescence?

Planned Obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is an implemented strategy to feel that product is no longer usable or the product is out of fashion. It also includes the minimum lifetime for the product at the time of conception.

The product is developed such a way it can be used for a planned lifetime.It looks so cruel that customers were forced to obsolete their product.

Philip Kotler an economist says “Much so-called planned obsolescence is working of competitive and technological forces in a free society – forces that lead to ever-improving goods and service“.

There are many electronic industries which start their next product or the next version of the software before the launch and marketing of current version.

Even Apple has confirmed that the slow down the performance of the processor because the lithium-ion batteries die after 2 years when on a high charge would damage the iPhone.

Planned Obsolescence

Policy Statement of Planned Obsolescence

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience to the customers, which includes the overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices.

Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have the low battery charge or as they age over time which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic component”.

If you look at the statement it seems the apple is working on planned obsolescence but there is a debate that they don’t do on purpose and the older iPhone’s actually need the software update and other applications to increase their performance.

Anyhow the same cannot be applicable to all the products. we face many software force us to upgrade the new version on a regular basis in which we don’t find much of update on the usage. People also say that software of older versions is slowed down purposefully to update their new versions. It’s a Planned obsolescence.

Planned Obsolescence Example Play station.

Example of Planned Obsolescence:

Video games are one of the examples of planned obsolescence. PlayStation’s are upgraded in which few games also work on the backward compatibility. In this system, you cannot play the old games which may be your favourite one on your new station. For which you need to buy the new version of games.

To be precise and clear this planned obsolescence is not only in the mobile industry. Also in every electronics and household industry. Even automobile industry also involve planned obsolescence.

As part the focus on regular service and unavailability of very small spare parts which in turn makes you replace the complete assembly.

This obsolescence hasn’t started after the mobile or computer industry. It came long back into our lives when people started using use and throw products.

Is planned obsolescence real?

Planned obsolescence required matured acceptance earlier. Today every new technology or product comes with a time stamp of obsolescence, and that leads to today biggest challenge for business.

The time available to amortize costs of research & development is falling every year. This has led to the paradoxical situation where the market leader is perhaps the only one doing well, and number two is struggling while number three is most likely bleeding.

Positions of leadership are also volatile, and all this is because obsolescence is faster. The pressure to innovate more frequently has, therefore, become the need.

Example:

The evidence suggests otherwise. Of the total number of iOS devices built, a vast amount is still in active use.

planned Obsolescence

This probably has something to do with each device getting 3 or 4 years of updates.

Whereas Android devices are often not updated at all, so are “obsoleted” at the point of sale.

If Apple intends to force users away from older hardware. They are doing a terrible job.